← How I Write
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- [00:00]
A
Wright Thompson is, full Stop, one of the best nonfiction storytellers in the world right now. So he shows up to my place, and immediately I'm like, I really like this guy's vibe. And so we start talking, and turns out I love Guinness zero and he loves Guinness zero. So we crack open a beer and we just talk about the writing process. How do you tell a great story? How do you nail an ending at the end? How do you use details to bring a character, a person to life? What do you do to tell a great story? That's what this episode is all about. And it's a heck of a lot of fun, too. You wouldn't believe it, but how I write costs a fortune to run. And it's thanks to Mercury that I can even do it. They're the sponsor of this episode and a banking platform that I've been using for the past four years to run my own business. When I started How I Write, I expected finances to be an absolute nightmare. I got team members in four different countries. I had things to think about, like currency exchange and taxes and expenses, and I was just dreading it when. But honestly, banking has maybe been the easiest part. I can't remember running into a single problem, and it's because I've been using Mercury. I switched over from other, more traditional banks because Mercury is so well designed. It's easy to get started, it's easy to use while also feeling totally legit and secure. And Mercury gives me all the tools to run a global company, like virtual cards, unlimited users, and the ability to customize each user's access level to exactly what they should see. And you know what? If anything goes wrong. Wrong, if I have any sort of challenge, I can always talk to their support team, which is super responsive and actually helpful, which is pretty rare these days. And all that is why I can't imagine banking any other way. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Column NA Members fdic. All right, back to the episode. Why is writing so hard? Why is it so hard?
- [01:55]
B
Well, bad writing is so easy, you know, bad writing is the easiest thing in the entire world. I sort of like, I don't think there's such a thing as writer's block, but there is writer's vomit. Like, we just can't stop writing, you know? And, like, so, like, I find it's hard. I feel like you get in your own way. I feel like, you know, I think the process of learning how to write, you Put a bunch of tools in your toolbox to try to, like, strip away the mystery and make it possible. And then I feel like that gets you to a certain point in your career. And then you have to start unlearning all of those things. And like, because you've sort of put this artifice in between you and the thing you're trying to write, when really all writing is, is trying to say something new. That's true. That is both specific and universal. And that helps the reader understand something they didn't understand before, preferably about themselves.
- [02:53]
A
When you say specific and universal, like, how does that show up in a piece? How do you think of that?
- [02:57]
B
Well, you know, I think Michael Jordan at 50 is trying to imagine what do you do when you used to be Michael Jordan? And that's an extreme version of something that everybody deals with, which is, what do you do when you start to think that your entire identity is built around something that has a shelf life that is so rooted and exterior understanding of you that you've almost feel like you're starting to lose some essential part of yourself? There's that great John Updike quote that I love, that the mask eats the face. And I just think that that's so. I think that happens to people and I think it happens to everyone. I had this realization periodically that I have two kids and they're the coolest and I love them, but I'm here and I'm not home. And so you aren't who you say you are. You are what you do. And so I think, you know, watching somebody so extreme as Michael Jordan, who is experiencing all this ratcheted up to 12, I think allows everybody to try to see pieces of themselves in other people's struggles. I mean, I certainly do that all the time. I mean, I think every great profile is a little bit about the writer working out your own and just trying to think about it. And I mean, honestly, like, people are gonna remember a couple of these stories, but, like, that's it. And so it's inherently dangerous for me to have so much of my own identity and self worth wrapped up in the fact that I go write these stories and other people like them. And so, you know, I don't have a great answer for that. I instinctively understand that it's dangerous and I need to get away from it. But, like, you know, I also like not going to do that. And I love doing this. And the happiest I am is when I'm writing and it's going well. And so it's I think writing these stories about people is the way to try to unpack all of that.
- [05:14]
A
You know, it's funny because you're talking about that and like, when I saw you almost felt like you were skipping when you were talking about today, you're like, yeah, you know, I'm working on this piece. Pull out this piece of paper, like, hey, I work here. And then you said something interesting. You said, when it's going well, I'm moving every two hours. And I was like, what? I thought moving is like sort of the antithesis of momentum and progress.
- [05:31]
B
So like, I, like, if it's going really well, my writing day will be. I have an office sort of way out in the country, probably like 10 minutes outside of Oxford. Oxford, Mississippi, where I live. And so I take my oldest to school and her drop off is like 7:20, and then it's 10 minutes from the school to my office. I usually stop at the Little John's country store and get like a sausage biscuit or a big cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
- [06:00]
A
That's a very Southern thing.
- [06:02]
B
And I'll go to my office and write till 11. And then I'll go to the town square in Oxford and sort of start moving. I'll go to Proud Blair's. I'll have like half a Guinness. I'll go like down to the Spring street cigar store.
- [06:16]
A
Oh, you're like a midday pie kind of guy.
- [06:18]
B
Oh, yeah. And I'm like, like I'm on this terrible diet where I'm allowed to have 12 ounces of alcohol a day of beer a day because I'm trying not to be so aggressively fat. And Guinness is your go to. Yeah, you could have it whenever, like. And if you've never. Have you had the Guinness double zero?
- [06:35]
A
I've had every single kind of Guinness that's made in seven different countries.
- [06:39]
B
So it's the non alcoholic Guinness.
- [06:41]
A
Yeah, it's very good, Very good, very good.
- [06:43]
B
You want to know the greatest feeling in the world? Have one of those for breakfast.
- [06:47]
A
Bridget, do we have the Guinness double zero? Let's have it right now.
- [06:50]
B
Let's do it. This is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about.
- [06:54]
A
Just I need you to acknowledge we got the proper Guinness zero in his cups.
- [06:58]
B
Well, look, look, if you're not going to turn something into a fetish, what is the point of doing it at all?
- [07:04]
A
All right?
- [07:04]
B
I feel pretty strongly that this is the way to do it.
- [07:07]
A
Let's go. Yes, yes, exactly it's like this. Unlike every other beer.
- [07:11]
B
That's right.
- [07:12]
A
You pour like this, and then you get the proper. Yes. This is also, like, one of the great. The great things is to watch the freshly poured Guinness turn black.
- [07:25]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [07:26]
A
Thank you.
- [07:27]
B
Let us settle.
- [07:28]
A
Let's go.
- [07:29]
B
So I like to move, you know, and so I. Yeah, I like the. I like the movement, and it's just exciting when it's going well. It's a really great day. You know, I'm in the middle. We were talking about this earlier. Like, I just sat down. Yeah, Yeah.
- [07:42]
A
I want to see this. I want to see this.
- [07:43]
B
So, like, yeah, I'm writing. I'm just writing longhand at this point. I'm in a very important part of this thing I'm writing. And so I. Anyway, I just need to.
- [07:54]
A
Why do you do longhand like this?
- [07:56]
B
I don't. I almost never do that. And so I just.
- [07:59]
A
This morning, that's what the day called for.
- [08:00]
B
Well, that and, like, I have a timeline that I've created that took a long time with sort of documents from a bunch of different places. And so I wanted to sit down with that timeline that I'd written and just, like, write it. And so I felt like I'm gonna go somewhere and sit and quiet and do it. And then, I don't know. I got. I. I feel like writing is problem solving, and I feel like. Like, I don't want to. I don't want to have. I don't want the tail wagging the dog. I don't want to. I always write in this place at this time, and I always do this. I just feel like every day is a new problem. And what is the best way I can solve it?
- [08:35]
A
Well, it seems for you, like, you really value structure and the architecture of a piece as much as the words themselves.
- [08:41]
B
Well, I think that, like, I wish someone had told me a long time ago that if you're going to be a professional writer for decades, writing is not going to be about words, but it's going to be about architecture. And only when you really understand how things fit together and move, can you then sort of, like, actually be thinking about the words. I mean, I feel like I've been doing this for 25 years, and I feel like only very recently do I feel like maybe I sort of know what I'm doing. Really. Like, maybe I'm just glad a lot of that early shit I wrote is, like, been scrubbed off the Internet.
- [09:17]
A
What are you saying? That it's gotten easier? That your stuff has Gotten better?
- [09:20]
B
Like, no, I think that it's gotten harder because I actually understand, like, what it is that you're supposed to be doing. And I think that, like, you have a way of moving the goalpost on yourself. And so, you know, you work really hard to learn how to write a 7 to 8,000 word magazine story, and you do it over and over and over and over again. I mean, I think one of the things that's missing, you know, I go talk to young writers all the time, and I mean, nobody wants to hear what I have to say, which is just. It's just reps. You know, Zen is a butt and a seat. There's no mystery. It's just reps. It's just fucking reps. And so, you know, I wrote a bunch of 1200 word stories until I really understood what a 1200 word story could and couldn't do. And then I wrote a bunch of 2,500 word stories. And then, you know, I worked for the Kansas city star for five years.
- [10:07]
A
3,600.
- [10:08]
B
3,600 words. I went over that, I think, once. Wow. And so I really understood what you could do in 100 inches. And then, you know, the ESPN magazine stories, it seemed like for a long time without me, I would outline it and then I would write it and it would be 7200-8500 words almost every time. And I guess that's just. I was thinking about stories in that length and then they started being 12 to 15. And, you know, I'm two books in and I have two more going right now. Two books that you're working on right now.
- [10:39]
A
Holy cow.
- [10:40]
B
And I feel like once you. You've seen a canvas that size, it's hard to go back because you feel like. It's weird to think like I've written 300 magazine stories as prelude to learn how to go do something. But it was just so thrilling, I mean, especially with the barn, to just feel like it was really thrilling on the days when it felt like it was working. And it felt. I just loved it. I loved waking up and doing it. I liked the rhythm of it. I mean, I was writing, you know, I was cutting a lot of them, but I was writing a thousand words a day, every day, no matter where I was. You know, we're on vacation in the mountains. We're on. We're at the beach. I'm getting up, I'm doing it. I also think that it's important for, like, my kids to see me do that. Like, this is, you know, back, it's a button, a seat. Like, there's no mystery. It's just, you know, get up and do it.
- [11:32]
A
So when you're thinking of a story, right, like you're, you're. You're dreaming something up, whether it's a book, whether it's magazine feature, maybe it's the same, maybe it's different. What are things you're looking for? Are you looking for a good hook? You're looking for a good story that, you know, speaks to your soul or something like that, that. Like a good theme? What is the thing that you're. That you're hunting for?
- [11:49]
B
That's really changed. I used to want thing. I was looking for white whales. I was looking for the story that no one could get. You know, what's something that'll be very impressive to my bosses and readers? It was very external. And, you know, I think now, I don't think there's such a thing as a good or a bad story idea. I think it's something you're obsessed with. You know, it's gotta be something that I'm really, really interested in and want to spend that time on. I mean, I find it to be really. And I've always felt this way, that it's just a really. You're doing a really personal thing in a really public way is what it feels like to me. And, like, I don't, you know, like, I love the craft of it. I love thinking about understanding how stories work, which I sometimes think I really do and sometimes I don't. I think it was very rigid for a long time about the craft of it. I used to say, if you're not outlining, you're doing it wrong. And now I sort of think that telling someone there's a right or wrong way to do it is the only way of doing it wrong, if that makes any sense.
- [13:00]
A
How much of this is things that you've learned, that the way that you do things now you wish you had done at the beginning? Like, I've actually learned a lot and I was wrong earlier. Or how much of it is kind of training wheels. Outlines get you. Gets you to the place where you don't have to outline. You gotta write external before you can do the internal. Like, how do you think about that?
- [13:18]
B
Well, I think that everything is a process and you're learning. I remember I took this Art Devlin was an English professor at the University of Missouri, and he was one of, if not the world's expert on Tennessee Williams. I took this one class that was it was interiority in the work of Tennessee Williams. And like my mother, who, you know, was an English major from Vanderbilt, I had to call her and be like, what does interiority mean? You know, like, I'm so fucked. There's a word in the title of this class. I don't know. My odds of figuring this out are slim and none. And so I think you have to learn that like, you know, scenes without interiority are two dimensional, they're origami, it's not a swan. And so like, I think they're it. You know, you learn a lot from people. I mean, you've had on, you know, you had my friend Tom Geno on, oh yeah, fucking the go, man. And like, you know, the best to ever do it for sure. And so he's still learning and he's still grinding.
- [14:15]
A
Break down the interiority thing for me.
- [14:17]
B
Gary Smith said one time that all a profile is, is figuring out what is a central complication of somebody's life and how on a daily basis do they go about solving it. And almost all of that is happening inside. And so, you know, I think you want your characters, I hate to call them characters. You want the people whose lives you have been entrusted with to be as complex in their decision making process as you are in yours. And I just think that's the whole thing. Bringing to the surface people's subterranean interior lives and then doing it where so the things they're doing, if you set it up right, become freighted with meaning. And so that, you know, when you watch a really good friend of yours do something and every other passing stranger wouldn't know that that was important or poignant, but you would, because you know them. You know, Michael Jordan falling asleep to westerns if you know that he misses his father every day. And where he feels closest to his father is when you're watching westerns. If you set that up in not a ham fisted way, then you get to come back at the end and describe a human being doing something. And now I am only describing his exterior actions. And yet the story is so rooted in his interior life that I don't have to explain it anymore. Sure. And that's when it feels like it's really, really working. And like that doesn't, you know, that doesn't happen all the time. I mean, this job is so humbling because it's just hard.
- [15:58]
A
One of the things that really stuck out to me is how, how you go about describing people. Like in the Tiger woods profile, you know, it doesn't take much and you just can learn so much about somebody like Twitter. Both his boats float a few dozen yards away. In two of the first three slips, the 155 foot yacht named Privacy, alongside the smaller, sleeker diving boat he named Solitude. So we see he's got Privacy, he's got Solitude. And then the whole thrust of the piece is like, this guy, one of them is that this guy who's a celebrity and he's had all of these things put into his life, but he's this weird, strange, introverted guy who's like, what do I do being this celebrity?
- [16:44]
B
And it's also like, you know, the thing you feel so strongly is that, I mean, often the people who care for us most screw up. I mean, Tiger woods, his father adored him. Tiger woods dad gets sort of a bad rap as, like a Richard Williams guy. And he just wasn't, you know, if Tiger didn't do well in school, Tiger didn't get to play golf like, you know, like Earl woods was. Had a lot of flaws and was a terrible husband, but I think was a really good, involved father, at least with Tiger, not his siblings. And you realize that Tiger signs and he goes up to that meeting in Nike where they come up with his marketing plan. And they did what any smart person would do, which is they went and found the best practices and they pulled a playbook that had just worked very well for Michael Jordan. And nobody in that room, including the person who loved Tiger woods the most in the world, stopped for a second to ask what happens when we take a plan that was designed for an extreme extrovert and then we just force it onto an extreme introvert, right? And it's like the most fundamental questions hiding in plain sight to me are some of the most interesting.
- [17:56]
A
And this is now the mask fighting the face.
- [17:59]
B
Well, it's both. I mean, and it's like, you know, Dale Murphy, the old 1980s baseball player, is one of the only happy retired former athletes I've ever met. And it's because he went out of his way when he retired to, like, kill the avatar that he was like, the main obstacle for me enjoying the next 50 years of my life is constantly having to deal with the ghost of the person I used to be. All of these stories, you know, the few good ones I've written, all the ones Seth Wickersham writes, all the ones that Tom Ginod writes, like, together, I think these stories are, I don't know, like a prayer for empathy to try to understand each other, you know, to understand another human being. A little bit at a time. And then slowly, thread by thread by thread by thread, you understand yourself. And, like, I think it's the job of a human being to understand. When you're on your deathbed, you better feel like you understand yourself and see yourself clearly. If you're still lying to yourself on your deathbed, like something's gone terribly wrong. And so, I don't know. I love doing this. I love these stories. And I don't know how you feel, but I certainly feel sometimes caught between being a receiver and a broadcaster.
- [19:19]
A
What does that mean?
- [19:19]
B
That the job of being a reporter is to receive information. The job of selling the things you've written is to be a broadcast of information. And nothing broadcasting is easy as. And it's intoxicating. And it just takes, like, a little bit of charisma with some arrogance. Those two urges, I feel like, are often in competition for lots of people, especially celebrity athletes.
- [19:47]
A
You talk about broadcasting being easy and intoxicating. What then is the fruit of reporting? Because presumably it's hard, it's slower, but there's some fruit that really.
- [19:58]
B
But it's that you get to see a little glimpse of the world. That's true. We're in the age of misinformation. One of the things Tom Ginod said that I still remember, which is the hardest thing in the world to do, is to tell the truth, despite all of the things conspiring to keep you from doing it. And so you asked earlier, why is writing hard? Talking, as you just say, shit writing, as you say, just a little and has to be said. Exactly right. And, you know, and I also write really fast and then edit slow because
- [20:36]
A
so your first draft, you just race through it.
- [20:38]
B
I'm flying. And like, why do you do that? I don't know. It's just how I do it. And, like, I've tried to slow down. I've tried to do all sorts of things. I've tried to sort of feel like, you know, have, like, a super ADD brain. And so the thing that's currently on fire is what gets the attention. Sure. And so I try to get it down and then go back. And like. So I cut things. Like, I love to cut, which is funny considering how long these things are. But, like, everybody's like. But no, like. Like, I really do like, I like the cut. Yeah.
- [21:12]
A
Tell me about the hammer. The hammer. When you're writing a piece and how the hammer comes at the end, how do you think about making sure the piece is written in a way that when that Hammer drops. It is a punch to the face.
- [21:24]
B
Yeah. I always want to know what the ending is, which. A fiction writer. The biggest difference maybe between fiction and nonfiction is that the best fiction writers, I think, don't know, they let the world evolve. You know, I'm not that good. I'm not George Saunders. Do you know what I mean? Like, I wish I could do that. I like to know where I'm going, because then I like to make decisions based on how to maximize the power of the ending. Right. You know, so, like, I know immediately when I see the ending of something. Like, I knew. You know, I did this Yankee Stadium thing where I knew I was going to end on the fact that Lou Gehrig's widow died in the 80s and no one came to her funeral.
- [22:07]
A
Yeah.
- [22:08]
B
Like, I was like, that's what. That's the ending. I don't know what the rest of it is, but something has to lead to that. You read an ending of a piece that's really. It almost feels like the air gets sucked out of the room. And, like, there's a hollowness. There's a. It feels hollow. It feels echoey. It feels like. I love that feeling.
- [22:29]
A
What I'm hearing from you is that a lot of what a good ending can have is it wraps up the piece of. But there's something also that opens. No, it's a look into something new.
- [22:37]
B
It's elliptical. That's why, like, kickers are death. Because, like, don't hammer the door shut. A story is supposed to open a door, like, not close it. And, like, I love elliptical endings.
- [22:51]
A
You know, it's funny because you're talking about this, and I just got this long email piece of feedback on a piece that I wrote, and I'm pretty proud of the piece. And one of the things that I wanted to do is, core to the piece, is I'm not trying to answer the question. I'm trying to pose a question. And I'm trying to say, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with this. And I got the long email from someone. This email's clearly caring. But I opened it and I was sort of skimming it, and I saw that the reader is going to demand an answer to the question you raised. And I just closed the email. I was like, ah, it's not what I'm trying to do.
- [23:28]
B
I know, but, like, you know what? Like, the reader gets a vote, you know? And I mean, the trick is to. The trick is to have a narrative arc that can lead you to a satisfying ending while also posing other ancillary underlying questions that were, in hindsight, the point of the whole thing all along. And so, like, you want to. Like, you want a story arc that I can have a satisfying ending to that also leaves the unresolved stuff unresolved in a way that is authentic to our lives. Caitlin Clark, that story ends with her career ending. It is about a period of time in her life, and the unresolved things are the questions posed about what's coming for her and her. You know, one of the sort of sub arcs in the piece is her understanding in this flash of self awareness, A, what's coming for her, and B, what she has to do to survive it. And C, the ticking clock that this has to happen so that can happen. And I don't need that to. In fact, it can't be unresolved. So the question the story should answer, how did Caitlin Clark get to be Caitlin Clark? And it should pose the question, is she gonna be able to do this?
- [24:51]
A
Yeah, tell me about this. You just said no, but the reader gets a vote. In what way does the reader get a vote?
- [24:57]
B
Because, like, otherwise it's just masturbation. Like. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, like, like, you're. I'm trying to share a human experience with another human being. And if they're not getting it, it's not their fault, it's mine.
- [25:11]
A
Sure, but in some ways, the reader gets a vote. But I. But does the reader get the vote in every single way? Because fundamentally, if you're driving the story.
- [25:21]
B
Well, if they put it down, you know, like, I think about that all the time about, like, a friend who's a playwright, and he talks constantly about his understanding about what the attention span of an audience in a Broadway theater is. And I was really shook walking away from this conversation because, you know, he's a very smart guy, Pulitzer Prize winner, and is really thinking about how to meet the audience, where they are. And, you know, sometimes I am not. And, you know, I'm like, I'm doing my thing. And then if they read it, they read it. And like, I wonder if they're like, the more you learn about writing, the more you have to level up. And so, you know, you could hear somebody say something at a point in your career, and it doesn't make any sense. And then you hear someone else say the same thing later, and you realize, like, oh, like, there's some fundamental part of this that not only am I not doing right, it's that I don't Even know, you know, sometimes you, like, you hear people are losing a game they don't know is being played.
- [26:20]
A
Sure.
- [26:20]
B
I think I'm more confident now than I've ever been. I was so much more cocky before.
- [26:26]
A
You were talking about plays. I saw Wicked the other night, and one of the things, you know, we went out for drinks after we were talking about it, and the way that we categorized the play was in scenes. Oh, I remember that scene. Remember this scene? Remember that scene?
- [26:38]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [26:39]
A
What's important about scenes in a story? Why do you think about stories like that?
- [26:42]
B
Well, you know, it's. The one's very cinematic and, you know, the. There's something beautiful about a screenplay to read, like a good screenplay. Like, go read this. Go read the Sprint. The. I just did this for something else. I read the screenplay of Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country. Okay. You don't need to watch the movie. It's all right there. It's unbelievable. And it's like, in some ways, the screenplay is better than the movie in the way that I think sports is better. I shouldn't say this, given where I work. Sorry, Burke. Sports is better on the radio than television because your. Your imagination gets a seat at the table. And so I think every single section, every scene needs to hit a different note so that it's not repetitive. And then, you know, we can, if we really want to, get in the weeds. I love to think about second sections of stories. Skip the weeds. Like, you know, Seth Wickersham and I talk all the time. A second section is almost a verb. And it's the. It's what you like. When it really works, it flows off of the lead in such a way that it feels inevitable and chronological, but actually what you're doing is expanding out this way. And so you're asking the question in the second scene in a broad thematic way that the rest of the story is going to answer. And so I think, you know, I really spend a lot of time thinking about, like, what's the second section of a magazine story? One of the things that was really difficult for me in figuring out how to write a book is, like, books don't have second sections. And Scott Moyers, who's my book editor, who I had dinner with last night, one of the things he said is, like, that he says all the time is, you can't depressurize the cabin. And so in, like, a magazine story, I think you're constantly depressurizing the cabin because you, like, what does that Mean, I mean that like that you break the spell by jumping ahead in time or like getting like a book, you have to like push a ball downhill and then clear out all the obstacles so it rolls. So I've just, you know, I've struggled some with the transition from magazine stories to books because I feel like they're actually not the same thing at all. And I just, I don't know why I thought this, but I just sort of thought a book would be like a really long magazine story and it's just not.
- [29:03]
A
And now on the scenes point when you're mapping out the story and thinking about how this is going to be, I'm almost imagining like a clothesline. And then you got little post it notes. Okay, scene one, scene two, scene three, scene four. I don't know, maybe there's. I'm going to be clear about my theme, the core, whatever. Like, is that something that you're conscious of before you actually get into the writing itself?
- [29:24]
B
Yeah, like I have a, you know, in my office, I have post it, I mean, not post it notes. I have like note cards pinned to the wall. And like, so that's like the barn was. So what's interesting is I outlined it broadly, but within that I didn't outline at all because I wanted to have the experience of section to section trying to feel my way. Because I sort of felt like I'm gonna have a better idea in the seat of what works than whatever theory I had standing in front of my wall. So I know I need to get from here to here, but I don't. What I didn't want to do is storyboard out how to do it. I'm working on a book now that is. Has so many moving parts that I'm scared if I do it like that I might just lose it. And so I'm actually really nervous because I've got to figure out like there's six sort of narrative arcs that appear at the beginning to have nothing to do with each other. And then by hopefully like a fourth of the way into the book, the reader on their own makes the first connection. Like, I've got to make that happen. Not on the page. Like that has to happen in the white space for this to work. And so one of the things I'm trying to figure out is like, at what point do I actually say when do I get explicit about it? And I don't honestly know the answer to that. That's, I think is going to be a feel thing, but I really want to. Like, I'M going to have to storyboard that a lot more because, you know, the barn, the first draft of the barn, I just wrote everything because I wasn't sure what was load bearing. And then I went and cut all the shit that didn't belong. So, like, the first draft of that was 280,000 words, and I cut 173,000. He was 280,000 words, and it ran at 107. And so I don't want to ever do that again. That feels like that was some, like, rookie shit. Do you know what I mean? Like, I feel like I had a real big idea and I didn't have the toolbox to land it, and so I did it the best I could, and it was unbelievably unefficient, and I don't ever want to do that again. So I'm trying to figure that out.
- [31:38]
A
Tell me about this. Why do you see in so many stories, they have a character, they confront an obstacle, they're changed by it. That's the through line of the story.
- [31:49]
B
Because I. I don't want to get like, hoo hoo on you. But, like, stories exist. Like, like gravity. A story, whether it's told around a campfire or in the New Yorker, are following fundamental organic rules that existed from the. Probably before the invention of language. They're just ways in which human beings experience the world and how, you know, you become yourself by every one of these obstacles and how you choose to handle it. Story, to me, like, what a story is, exists in the world. I mean, it. You know, you're sort of like. I think Virginia Woolf wrote about how, like, the stories exist, some people can see them. You're not making them, they're already there. You're just seeing them. I feel like when you go find it, that story wants to be something. And I think stories are the best. When you were translating that information, as opposed to you trying to impose your will on it. I mean, I'm really not trying to get, like, crazy metaphysical about it, but, like, I do, fundamentally, super concretely, what
- [33:03]
A
I hear you saying is when you go in search of a story, there's something that compels you, something that brings you into the piece. Okay, so now you're in the piece, you're looking for the story. And what you're looking for is almost like a. A path that was already there. And it just kind of.
- [33:19]
B
I'm not trying to make the path. I'm trying to see the path that was there before I got there.
- [33:24]
A
Walk it.
- [33:24]
B
Yes. Yeah, and like. And like, as. As hoo hoo and hippie dippy as that. That. That's really. It is that, like, they're. I think you run into trouble when you try to force things. And by the way, I forced a lot of things. I mean, you know, there. I think it takes a while to feel comfortable with that.
- [33:41]
A
Tell me about, in stories, a sense of place, how place shows up for me.
- [33:46]
B
That's the whole, like, I'm most interested in place. I think so much of who we are is informed by our relationship with home. Bruce Springsteen in his Broadway show had this thing where he said, you can either be a ghost to your children or an ancestor. You can either wrap your shit tight around their ankles like chains and drag them down, or you can give them a leg up. And so I feel that me trying to understand other places are just proxies for me trying to understand my own place and make sense of my own home.
- [34:19]
A
Is that Mississippi?
- [34:21]
B
For me, that'd be the Mississippi Delta. I mean, the barn really was. If I never wrote another thing in my entire life, honestly, I would feel like it had all been worth it because I feel like I couldn't have written that book five years ago. And so I felt like everything I'd ever tried to write was practice to go actually tackle the thing that had been sitting there waiting on me all along, which was try to understand this weird place where I'm from that I have very mixed feelings about and hate many things about it, but also have a deep sense of love for it. And I feel like I'm forever. Human beings are just forever searching for home. And either the home that you didn't know as a child or something that was a paradise lost that you're trying to return to. I love that Jason Isbell line. I thought I was running to what I running from or, like, you know, I mean, I just think that, like, there's just a constant search for home.
- [35:28]
A
Now when you talk about place, place being important, do you feel like place is a character? Do you feel like it's a stage? What's the metaphor?
- [35:35]
B
Well, I mean, you know, the. The. The cliche is New York is a character. You know, like, you know, I think place really matters because I think it really matters to me. I think everybody's interested in different things. I think one of the tricks of, like, if you're trying to learn how to be a writer and is to figure out the things that you're interested in. And so one of the. For me, like. Like, I'm Like, I mean, for me, the. The greatest piece of American art ever made is Absalom. Absalom. And it is a deep, complex, multi generational history of one piece of dirt. You know, and like, in some ways the barn is just that stolen. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like there's something you can learn by excavating the deep, deep history of one place. And you know, the, what the, like book editors say you can either go wide or deep. And like, I think there's something beautiful about trying to do both. And like, that was the idea. It's like I'm going to write as deep a history as I can. And tried to excavate all the blood and the dirt and you know, the, the idea that, you know, there's that book. The body remembers the score. The ground remembers the score too.
- [36:53]
A
What do you make about the arc of Southern writing? Right? There's a lot of classic Southern writing that's deep in American culture and American lore. And also right now, dude, last five years, the rise of country music. I mean, I was in LA last week driving through Santa Monica, Uber drivers playing Zach Bryan or something, And I'm like, 10 years ago, that would have never.
- [37:15]
B
And also, like, I don't know what a lot of these country music singers have to do with the South. Do you know what I mean? Like, is Luke Bryan from the South? I have no idea. You know, like, some guys are like, I love Zach, I love Chris Stapleton, I love Eric Church.
- [37:30]
A
Bruce Springsteen is one of my all time favorites.
- [37:33]
B
You know, he got a thank you note from Bruce Springsteen to this day.
- [37:36]
A
Want to hear that song?
- [37:37]
C
Yeah.
- [37:37]
B
You shouldn't sing in public. I'm just kidding.
- [37:40]
A
Well, I can't do that.
- [37:41]
B
Deep Eric Church voice. And so like, you know, there's a sense that like, one of our problems in the south is that we, in a desire to protect the past, we. We prioritize. We privilege the past over the present. So you talk about Mississippi writers. People want to talk about William Faulkner, they want to talk about Eudora Welty, they want to talk about Willie Morris, they should be talking about Jesmyn Ward, they should be talking about Natasha Trethewey, they should be talking about Kiese Lehman. And so like, there is a very vibrant Southern culture. We just sometimes seem so interested in protecting the past that we forget the beautiful thing that's happening in front of us. But I mean, you know, Faulkner gets something so essentially right about the south, which is that it's love and hate and it is a place where the conflict that exists inside the hearts of every human being is played out on the landscape in an external way that almost never happens. One of the reasons I think Southern literature has this reputation is it's one of the few places in the world where the interior becomes manifestly exterior. And so, you know, you know, if they have the energy vortexes, like, people go out to Sedona, like, I think the south is one of those places where the thing cracks open and this big subterranean human ideas, the conflict in the heart of every human being burst into actual physical action on the actual physical land. And so, like, again, I think the Southern writers aren't creating these worlds. I just think, like Virginia Woolf said, every now and then a genius comes along who can see it. You know, it's like the sixth sense. Well, Faulkner could see was already there. And one of the reasons those book books resonate with people so much across generations is he is describing something that you have instinctually felt forever but had never had the vocabulary to do because you couldn't see it.
- [39:48]
A
Right?
- [39:48]
B
And so, like, I love. Like, that's one of the things. Like, I love that. That Virginia Woolf thing about, like, that. That stories exist and some people can see them.
- [39:58]
A
Tell me about quotes. Like, you're good. First of all, today you've probably said seven or eight quotes, but also, I just couldn't believe how good some of the quotes were in your pieces. Like, they're just these little stretches of dialogue.
- [40:11]
B
So I love dialogue as opposed to quotes like, I love. I think long runs of dialogue are magic, and I think they actually speed the piece up.
- [40:22]
A
Okay, this was good. This is about Jordan.
- [40:24]
B
Yeah.
- [40:25]
A
In case anyone in the inner circle forgets who's in charge, they only have to recall the code names given to them by. By the private security team assigned to overseas trips. Estee is Venom, George is Butler, Yvette is Harmony. Jordan is called Yahweh, a Hebrew word for God.
- [40:44]
B
That is crazy. And it's not a compliment. No, no. Like, no, that's like, his coat here. That's wild. The details of the whole thing. I mean, like, by the way, like, we're talking about writing, but really what we need to be talking about is reporting because, like, you cannot, cannot, cannot write your way out of a hole in reporting. And when you find yourself doing. When somebody says something is purple, something is overwritten, all overwritten really means is underreported. Do you know what I mean? Like, you just don't have it. And so, like, I catch myself.
- [41:17]
A
Were you saying that it's hollow.
- [41:19]
B
It's just, it's just, you're just using words like, and it's not saying anything. Every time I feel like I can sort of write myself out of. I can write around a hole in my knowledge. It's just bad, you know, like you go read it and you're just like, oh my God, like I can't believe it, you know, and like, you know, the details matter. Like, ESPN just had this great story by a writer named Baxter Holmes and it was about Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan and the genesis of Black Mamba.
- [41:50]
A
Oh, cool.
- [41:51]
B
It's an incredible story. And so like a lot of people had sort of heard those whispers that like, that this was a thing. But Baxter went out and found people to tell him on the record with details. And so nothing. You could give Jonathan Franzen 10 years to just say stuff about this. But like Baxter went and got it. And so like so much of writing, especially non fiction writing, is actually just reporting. That's still my favorite. You know, you asked about sort of moments of joy. Like my favorite is when you find out something, you know, like I have a timeline. I'm trying to account for about a 10 month period in the life of this person who may or may not be a spy. And to make the timeline, it's like 10 or 12 different documents and six archives. And like the ability to pull all these pieces and then write one piece of paper that has a very simple outline on February 4, 1941, he was on March 6. Like the joy of that. So I don't know if that's writing or not, but like that's the real joy.
- [43:06]
A
Yeah, I'm imagining you're, you're sort of sitting there. It's almost like a collage. Taking all these little things, bringing them together. Oh, okay, cool. That's quite work.
- [43:13]
B
It was so like the, the feeling of satisfaction when I held up that one piece of paper was like one of the greatest feelings I've had in a really long time. And that was like three days ago. A great detail will do the work of, you know, 50 shitty sentences. And so like, you know, every time I, like every time I'm stuck, it's just that I haven't reported enough or that like I believe my own hype and think I can just write my way out of this and you can't.
- [43:38]
A
I'm sorry if this stupid question, but what does reported mean? Like, what does that mean? Is reading, is talking to people, interviewing.
- [43:44]
B
It's all of it. It's interviewing people. It's, you know, like, I was just in an archive in Biarritz, Switzerland, that I had to. That took me like a year and three or four months to get them to open. It was closed. Biarritz, France. Sorry. And so, like, I have 1600 pages of documents in French. I have no idea what this shit says. I just was taking pictures. And so now it's all sitting them. And I'm going to literally have to translate them one at a time or the Internet is going to translate, right?
- [44:14]
A
Yeah.
- [44:15]
B
And someone's like, do you speak French? And I'm like, well, I do now. Thanks, Internet. And so that's gonna take me. It takes me 10 minutes a page to think about it and take enough time to sort. So, 10 minutes a page, that's six pages an hour. That's 60 pages a day. That's 300 pages a week. That's five and a half weeks to get through all this stuff. But, like, no idea what's going to be in there. And so, like, the joy of that, the entire story.
- [44:50]
A
Describe the joy. Describe the joy.
- [44:52]
B
It's like a treasure hunt. Like, I have no idea. Each page, I have no idea. Like, I've done a couple of them and there have been, like, huge. Or at least what for me in the story are like bombshells. And I'm just like. So I. So reporting is interviews, reporting as archives. I love archives. Like, just hanging out and just grinding on archives. I love that. You know, reporting is. You know, I think we. I think we mystified. I think reporting is trying to figure out what you want to know and then trying to figure out who in the world would know that information, and then trying to figure out how to get that person to tell you or how to get access to the place that has the answer. So, again, it just feels like problem solving to me. And look, that's the real job to me is like the dig. You know, the writing is the fun part later. You know, that's. That's a lot. That's not true. They're both fun. They're just very, very different.
- [45:50]
A
Can you tell me more about secondary characters? The roles that they play? Fathers, friends, people. Just people in the lives of the. Well, the characters, the people that you're writing about.
- [46:02]
B
Well, you know, if. If we were going to write about Guy, 10 different people who know Guy from 10 different places in his life will have 10 different versions of him. And I don't think my job is to sort those out. I think my job is to present a fractal image of a complicated human being who sits somewhere at the intersection of all of these other people's impression of them. I think we all have a story we tell ourselves about ourselves, and then I think there's a story that other people who don't know us tell about us. And I think that the truth lives somewhere at the intersection of those things.
- [46:44]
A
Tell me about driving questions, posing a question at the beginning, and how a question both propels you through the reporting, through the writing, and the reader through the process of experiencing what you've made.
- [46:57]
B
You know, I think one of the things you get better at the more you do it, is not being so ham fisted with posing the question literally in the piece. So I always have some questions I need to answer. You know, I'm writing about Steve Kerr right now, and the question I want to answer is, what is the work of the rest of his life going to be when basketball is finished? What happens on the first day of the rest of his life? And so, like, the meat of that story exists in the undefined period after the actual story ends. And so, like, you know that, like, I think that's something that I probably couldn't have outlined. I don't think I'm ever going to say that explicitly, but, like, hopefully when you read the piece, it'll vibrate with that. You know, I did a Joe Montana profile a couple years ago that I really liked because I felt like you were watching him struggle with what to do when time was diminishing your most valuable assets, which was the way people remembered you. And, like, I don't think I ever said that. Like, that's what it was about to me.
- [48:04]
A
Do you care how well your pieces do?
- [48:07]
B
No.
- [48:07]
A
No.
- [48:08]
B
I probably shouldn't admit that, but I just don't.
- [48:10]
A
So what does that.
- [48:11]
B
Well, because here, because here's why I've had pieces that we thought were gonna kill that didn't. I wrote this story that I loved. One of the best things I think I've ever written about Archie Manning that, like, no one read. And then I'll do a. I did a story about, during the World Series about a rapper from Houston named Cal Wayne, where I just went out with him one night in Houston, wrote about it, and it, like, melted the Internet. And I'm just like, you don't know. And I think, like, every time I hear somebody in an analytical position trying to tell me what they think the data says about what audiences want, I just always think post hoc, ergo, propter, hog Post hoc ergo propter. Hawk pose. Like you. You.
- [48:51]
A
What does that mean?
- [48:51]
B
It's Latin for their. It's for the. For the logical fallacy of after. Or there after, therefore, because of.
- [48:58]
A
Okay.
- [48:58]
B
And so, like, I. I fundamentally think we have no idea what people want to read and why, so I don't really care how they do look. I want them to do well because I want my bosses to feel like they got to win. And, like, I really like all my bosses. We have the. I have. The best, sort of the way ESPN works is you have, like, senior, like, senior vice presidents over, like, silos. And so this is the best one of those we've ever had. And so his name is Chris Buckle, and he's just his relentless investigative journalist, and he's really great. And so I care about the traffic to the degree that he cares about the traffic just because, like, I like him and respect him and want him to feel like he's getting wins, but, like, basically, no, I don't care.
- [49:47]
A
So as you think about improving at the craft, what is it that you look at? Is it, like, an internal sense of always pursuing? Oh, that's good. Is it reading other writers?
- [49:59]
B
I think it's like. I think you have phases, and I think, you know, phases as a writer. Yeah. And I don't know what mine are. Somebody smarter than me could probably go read these stories and, like, group them together. I wrote a second Michael Jordan story that I love called A History of Flight, and I feel like there was a phase that started there that ended with the barn. And I don't really know. I just sort of feel like every single thing I did from that Jordan story to that book was of a piece. And so now I feel like I'm a little bit still doing this and also trying to find something new. I'm a big believer in the. In the essentialness of reinvention. And, like, not like, I don't want to just write the same story over and over again. I mean, I hadn't written. You know, I hadn't written a profile for a long time of, like, a current modern athlete until I did Caitlin Clark. And I almost sort of did that because I was like, I want to go do one of those again, because, like, I feel like I'm missing that. I mean, I think you need. I think you have phases, and I think, like, you should. I think, if you're still doing the thing now exactly like you did 20 years ago, like, that's not interesting at all. I guess some people are probably intentional about that. I don't. Like, I feel like I'm just sort of stumbling along, you know, and like, the patterns emerge to other people later. You know, Jay Lovinger used to always warn me about, like, repetition of effect, you know, and just, like, I get into things I'm obsessed with, and then I'll just, like, keep going back and back and back and back and back and back. And so, you know, I. I feel like you could go read all these stories in order and they would reveal more than I'm comfortable with about what was happening in my own life at the moment they were happening.
- [51:45]
A
What's your beef with brainstorming sessions? People coming in on Monday morning?
- [51:49]
B
I just think it's fucking ridiculous. Like, the idea that we're going to do something in an office like, this is deeply personal stuff. Like, I don't. I like. And, you know, I have a lot, like, collaborative, like, I make a couple of TV shows and I've made some documentaries, and those are as collaborative as sort of writing is you in a foxhole with you and your editor. And so, yeah, I like to. I want to go make things with my friends, and I want it to feel like it is flowing out of that and like, nothing kills that faster than someone trying to play office. I want to go have dinner and sit around and talk. I just, like, if I were to charge a vspn, which again, I'm frequently reminded that I'm not, I would have. I would have a rule that no meetings can have chairs. And then, like, every meeting longer than 15 minutes has to have tacos or something.
- [52:43]
A
It's funny that you say that, because I'm working on a film series right now, and we're in the process of writing it, and, man, so many good ideas come in through the imessage group chat, and so many of the best lines are just somebody saying, hey, I was here. And then I'm like, oh, okay, you got to put that in. You got to put that in the meeting itself.
- [53:01]
B
The structure of the meeting is a mask. And, like, the whole artifice of the thing is standing between you and your stated goal because everybody's in there and, like, you want to look good in front of your boss. Like, in most brainstorming sessions, the goal for the individuals in the brain is to look good is to look good, not to make the thing good. And so, like, I think when you're thinking less and you're just firing off text messages, like, I do a lot of those essays that air, like sets of place essays that Air to a broadcast of sporting events, college football, the Masters and a bunch of stuff like
- [53:40]
A
a Tom Rinaldi type.
- [53:41]
B
Yeah, so I do a lot of those. And the. Exactly. And the best one we've ever.
- [53:47]
A
He is good.
- [53:48]
B
Oh, I love Tom. Oh, my God. He also is the nicest guy in the world. And that's real. But the bet we used to do all the open championship and so we would go over there and spend weeks doing all this stuff. The best one that's ever aired was written by our cameraman. Kalon Shouts who? We were just freezing ass coal in Scotland and we're sitting there and he's shooting one of those really hairy cows. And he just turns and goes, hi, Scotland. Where the cows wear coats. And we were like, that's on television. And like it still remains, like. So the accidental thing done in a sense of collaborative fun and joy is always better than something on your calendar or as, God forbid, a zoom meeting. And so I, you know, so, yeah, I hate those things.
- [54:34]
A
What would you call that kind of writing, those short TV pieces?
- [54:39]
B
Well, it's interesting because writing for TV is so different than writing. Writing.
- [54:42]
A
Yeah, tell me. Well, that's what I want to do. I want to go writing for tv, writing documentaries, writing books, writing articles, and just get. What is the core lesson from those four.
- [54:52]
B
So writing for TV is tell, don't show because the camera is showing the best writing for documentaries is no writing at all. Because if you're writing, you failed. Cause it's best when it's just sound like every time I'm doing a voiceover in a documentary, it's because I couldn't figure out how to do it without one. And so. And again, that is, I think when you're writing for a documentary, I mean, I've done that a bunch. I mean, I think one you're writing, we call them skinny tracks, but just like connections between here and there. And then the other thing is you have to do this really sparingly, but you're trying to inject subterranean ideas into the thing as almost like putting some top spin on it or some English on a pool ball. What does that mean? And so like, if I have some sort of global idea about how these things are connecting or what they're suggesting about the human experience, I mean, it's a very light touch, but like in a track you can do that and it sort of amplifies, you know, writing, writing, like real writing.
- [55:54]
A
Well, let's do books and articles.
- [55:56]
B
You know, they're very similar, but I think an article, you know, like a magazine story is about, like, one thing. And it has to me to feel like a dispatch. Like, it's a letter from a time and a place. So it's like, it's true right now. Like, this is. This is a letter from someone's life on this time and this place, planet Earth. And, like, it's a document. And I feel like a book is trying to create a. You know, is trying to create the universe. It's like an article or magazine story is trying to capture a universe, and I feel like a book is trying to make one, and those feel very different to me, essentially. I think it's taken me a long time to sort of get there, break down that difference. I think that at the core of the barn, the reason I think the book works is because I found this map that shows the railroads coming into Mississippi around 1900. And, you know, we. Manifest destiny is such an important idea to the American identity. And, you know, I love Greg Grandin's book, the End of the myth that, like, when we lose the desire and the ability to explore and to move, we've lost something essential about our national soul. And so this idea that one of, if not the last places in the lower 48 that was settled wasn't Tombstone, it wasn't out west, that it was in the Mississippi Delta and actually directly underneath the barn Remy Till was killed suggests something tectonic about a enormous misunderstanding of something fundamental not just to American history, which is about the past, but to American identity, which is about the present. And so the entire book is a thought experiment. But, like, what if everything we think about ourselves is wrong? And so, like, that's not what a magazine story would be. It was interesting. Like, I had a great editor at the Atlantic. The first draft of that story. Tried to do that.
- [57:57]
A
Tried to do what?
- [57:58]
B
Tried to hold that whole world. Got it. And, like, you know, I think her name's Denise Wills from the Atlantic, and she's a great editor. And I think she would tell you if she was sitting here that, like, I was trying to juggle and the balls were falling. And, like, you know, if a book is rhythmic juggling, a magazine story is, I'm going to pick this thing up and I'm going to throw it as hard as I can at that target on that wall. Right.
- [58:24]
A
How about a profile?
- [58:26]
B
What is the central complication of someone's life and how on a daily basis, do they go about answering it? That's the core thing. That's it. That's it. Like, what's the. Oh, that's football, gentlemen. That's all it is. Do you know what I mean? Or whatever. I forget those movies run together. But, like, you know, that's it. It's the. I'm doing the Steve Kerr thing. And he has four values on the wall of his office that he wants the players in his building to experience every day. And it's joy, empathy, competitiveness, and mindfulness. And I feel like those are four pretty good things if you want to be, like, a professional magazine writer. Is the four sort of things to have on your wall. And, like, every time out. Are you being competitive? We're all competitive. You know, you better be. Are you. Is there joy? Are you having. Even if the topic is hard, are you having joy in the discovery? Empathy, like, you know, you gotta love your fellow human being or you can't really do this. And then mindfulness, like, you gotta be present. You know, my dad used to say, the hardest thing in the world is to keep your mind and body in the same place. I still struggle with that, you know.
- [59:45]
A
Can I show you this?
- [59:46]
B
Yeah.
- [59:47]
A
You've seen this clip. Steve Kerr encouraging Steph Curry.
- [59:51]
C
Here's what I'm going to show you. That's your shooting totals. That's your plus minus. All right? So it's not always tied together. You're doing great stuff out there. The tempo is so different when you're out there. Everything you generate for us is so positive. It shows up here. Not always there, but it always shows up here. You're doing great. Carry on, my son.
- [60:13]
A
Like, I think it really speaks to those four things. Like, you know, Steph's struggling out there. And he basically pulls together some data and he says, I know that you feel like you're struggling. I see it in your body language. But there's a difference when you're out there, and I'm trying to show you that. And then he says something like, you're doing well, my son. And it's that competitive. It's that joy, it's that empathy. Has that empathy for Steph right there. And it's like 20 seconds. But that really warms my heart every time I see it, because it's like. It's like the epitome of good coaching.
- [60:45]
B
Well, that. And. And, you know, those things are applicable. I mean, one of the things I love about sports is that especially, you know, we were talking earlier about, we live in the sort of age of post truth and spin and brand ball. Don't lie. You are what you do when the lights come on. And that is true whether you were Steph Curry or it's you writing what you're writing. You know, it. It's. We all. We all have grand ideas about who we would like to be, and we have ideas about who we think we are and how we wish we were seen. But like all. All you are is who you are when the lights come on. And I love that about sports, that, you know, there's nowhere to hide. There are no lies. And I love that. I mean, you know, it's. I've sort of flirted over the years with going and. And writing for like a non sports magazine. And I just found that, like, that was just ego and vanity. Like, I felt like I should want to do it. I felt like that was a next step. I feel like, you know, a response sometimes, maybe to boredom, but like, I'm not. I don't. What a gift to get to write about sports. I mean, I like, I just feel like everything we want to know about the best and worst of human beings and what we are capable of is visible on the field.
- [62:13]
A
Last question. Let's end by talking about endings. We talked a little bit about hammers before. What else makes for a good ending?
- [62:20]
B
I mean, a resolution. A resolution shadowed by some elliptical unknown. I mean, honestly, you know, you don't want to bow on it, but you also don't want it. Just like sometimes a story will like spaghetti and it's just a mess of like wet noodles and it doesn't go anywhere. And you, like, you like. I often think that, like, it's that thing we were just talking about. You've lost the ability to see your own story. You saw it and then you lost it and you couldn't land it. I've had things. I went through draft after draft after draft after draft. I did this story about three generations of Ted Williams family where I spent this incredible amount of time with Ted's daughter. This, the baseball player? Yeah. And she let me into his filing cabinets and his diaries and I just had like. It was crazy. And I wrote that over and over and over. My editor, Paul kicks and I. Over and over and over and over again because I just couldn't. I could see it and then I couldn't see it. Yeah, I think when you don't know what your ending is like with that one, you struggle to see it. If you can see the ending, then it's just. You're just following a map, sort of.
- [63:36]
A
Rock on.
- [63:36]
B
All right, man. Thanks. I hope that was all right. Didn't waste everybody's time.
- [63:41]
A
Got Guinness?